ReadWrite - profileshttp://readwrite.com/tag/profiles
enCopyright 2015 Wearable World Inc.http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssTue, 31 Mar 2015 13:48:34 -0700Twitter Debuts New Mobile Profiles For iPhone<!-- tml-version="2" --><div tml-image="ci01b52904899c860c" tml-image-caption=""><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIxNDI3Mjk1NzQ3ODAyNjM3.jpg" /><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div><p>Your Twitter profile is going to look a bit different to users on iPhones.&nbsp;</p><p>On Thursday, Twitter <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/2014/a-new-profile-experience-on-twitter-for-iphone">rolled out a new look</a> for user profiles on iPhones that puts user information—including profile photo, about section, and tabs for tweets, photos and favorites—all in one place.&nbsp;</p><p>People will now be able to find out more about Twitter users with just a glance and the streamlined profile.</p><div tml-image="ci01a87e1f7bf9860f" tml-image-caption="" tml-render-size="large" tml-render-position="center"><figure><img src="http://a2.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/MTE5NTU2MzI1MjEwNDkwMzc5.gif" /><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div><p>Instead of swiping at the top of Twitter profiles to see more information about a new follower, and tapping multiple times to view a person's important information, you can now view it without switching windows.&nbsp;</p><p>The tabs for tweets, photos and favorites are at the top of the new profiles, but once you start scrolling down the timeline, they'll remain at the top of the screen for simple tabbing from one section to another.</p><p>iPhone users on iOS 7 and above should see the new profiles immediately. Twitter on iOS 8 will also now let you reply to tweets, follows or messages directly from an iOS 8 notification, thanks to new features in Apple's mobile software.</p><p>There's no word yet on whether or when Twitter might bring the new profiles to, or make use of active notifications on, Android.</p><p><em>Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/quintanomedia/10779582136">Anthony Quintano</a>;&nbsp;graphic courtesy of Twitter</em></p>Information all in one place.http://readwrite.com/2014/09/18/twitter-new-profiles-mobile-ios
http://readwrite.com/2014/09/18/twitter-new-profiles-mobile-iosSocialThu, 18 Sep 2014 15:17:45 -0700Selena LarsonDon't Endorse Your Friends For "Murder," And Other LinkedIn Mistakes To Avoid<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>The other day I received a notification from LinkedIn that made me actually laugh out loud. My friend and colleague Lauren Orsini had endorsed me for “murder” and “arson.”</p><p>It was a joke referencing&nbsp;my Twitter bot and law-breaking alter ego, <a href="https://twitter.com/SelenaEbooks/status/482441802793123840">@SelenaEbooks</a>;&nbsp;I'm not actually all that skilled in either murder or arson. But LinkedIn asked me if I wanted to include the new endorsements on my LinkedIn page. I accepted "murder" because I wanted to see if LinkedIn would actually take it—and it did. (I did turn down "arson," though.)</p><p>The experience made me realize how easy it is to show off false endorsements on LinkedIn. And how unfortunate those could end up being for someone's career should the wrong hiring manager or recruiter see them.</p><p>It's not just joke endorsements that could potentially jeopardize a potential job prospect or tarnish online reputations. Whether they're purposely to get a rise out of a friend, colleague or stranger, or because people legitimately don’t understand how to use the service, there are a few key things people should stop doing on LinkedIn. </p><h2>Provide False Endorsements</h2><p>Endorsements are there to showcase your skills and expertise as determined by your colleagues. You can set your own, and have people add to them, or, like my friend Lauren did, you can endorse something that isn’t listed on your profile.</p><p>It’s impossible to endorse people for random things—murder and arson happen to be actual skills law enforcement officers proudly display on their profiles. LinkedIn can’t tell whether such endorsements make you look like a skilled investigator or a criminal.</p><p>False endorsements can be silly, but they also can be disreputable. If you’re applying for a new job and have 20 endorsements for a skill that makes you look like you're angling for a position on the Most Wanted list—or even, more prosaically, that you merely lack—it might crimp your prospects..</p><h2>Flirt With Connections</h2><p>No, you should never flirt with people via LinkedIn. Just don't.</p><blockquote><p><strong>See also:&nbsp;<a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/28/linkedin-blocking-engineering-effort">The Battle Of The Block: How LinkedIn Finally Stopped The Stalkers</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>As Elana Carlson <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/do-not-flirt-over-linkedin/">at the Daily Dot</a> points out, even asking someone out for drinks or coffee via LinkedIn can put people—women especially—in an awkward position. Is this person asking me to meet professionally, or personally? If you are asking for someone’s time offline, make sure to make your intentions very clear, and if you do try flirting, don’t be surprised if people block you. (Which <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/28/linkedin-blocking-engineering-effort">they can now do</a>, finally.)</p><h2>Make Your Avatar A Cartoon Character</h2><div tml-image="ci01a87e1f2080860f" tml-image-caption=""><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIzMDQ5NjYzNzI3ODk2MDc2.jpg" /><figcaption></figcaption></figure></div><p>It might be cute, but there’s no reason for you to have an animated character as your LinkedIn profile photo. Unless, of course, you’re an animator. </p><p>Photos are one of the most crucial parts of your LinkedIn profile. It’s what people look at first, and can help people recognize you when meeting at networking events or job interviews.</p><p>Try not to use the same photos as you would, say, on Facebook. That means no group photos (which one are you?), no snapshots from the club (those are never very flattering), and no photos of you in a bathing suit (because self-explanatory.)</p><p>The best photo you can choose is a flattering headshot with great lighting in order to create a great first impression on connections and potential hiring managers.</p><h2>Constantly Refresh “How You Rank,” Expecting It To Change</h2><p>Yes, people really do this. <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/05/21/the-linkedin-games-introducing-how-you-rank">How You Rank</a> is one of the most popular features on LinkedIn, because it shows people how they stack up against their colleagues (or competitors, or frenemies). </p><blockquote><p><strong>See also: <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/05/21/the-linkedin-games-introducing-how-you-rank">LinkedIn's Hunger Games: Will You Volunteer As Tribute?</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>According to LinkedIn, many people refresh this page over and over in the hopes that it magically improves. That’s like staring at your bank balance expecting it to go up.</p><p>Instead, you could check out other people’s profiles to see why they’re the top dog. LinkedIn recommends finding keywords or skills that stand out, and comparing your experience and summary sections to see where you may be falling short. If it’s just a matter of adding in some details you might have overlooked, you might eventually notice your ranking has improved—though not, we should stress, within the next few minutes.</p><h2>Connect With Your Connections' Connections</h2><p>LinkedIn isn’t Twitter. It might be stealthily <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/31/linkedin-follow-button-spread">rolling out a “follow” button</a> that will make it easier for strangers to read each other’s updates, but LinkedIn is still no place to connect with people you don’t know personally. Because they might take it personally—and not in a good way.</p><blockquote><p><strong>See Also:&nbsp;</strong><strong><a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/31/linkedin-follow-button-spread">LinkedIn Has Quietly Rolled Out A "Follow" Button To Millions Of Members</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>Look for contacts you with whom you have some common ground with and know already, and reach out to them in a professional way. If there’s no reason for you to be connecting with someone other than “well, my friend did,” then don’t connect with them at all.<strong></strong></p><h2>Spam Your Contacts</h2><p>Yes, LinkedIn provides an email service. No, you shouldn't use it to email all your contacts about your latest business proposal. Stay classy and scram with the spam.</p><p>Instead, treat LinkedIn's inMail very cautiously. Before sending anyone an inMail, make sure you know what they do and have a good idea why they would care about what you have to tell them. Copy-pasting emails to connections might be an easy way to send out a lot of information at once, but it could also prune your network, possibly drastically.</p><h2>Publish A Personal Blog</h2><div tml-image="ci01a8bfd7c9c9860b" tml-image-caption="LinkedIn's publishing tool"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTE5NDg0MDYyMjA4MzI5MjMx.jpg" /><figcaption>LinkedIn's publishing tool</figcaption></figure></div><p>LinkedIn now lets <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/31/linkedin-publishing-platform-15-million">over 15 million people</a>&nbsp;publish articles on its platform; eventually, everyone will be able to use it. The trick is to use it well.</p><p>LinkedIn is a great place for you to publish knowledgeable professional advice, share your career expertise, and describe projects or services you’ve helped build or manage. But you don't want to get too personal. </p><p>Think about the conversations you have with your coworkers. Do you regale your cube-mates with tales from your sister’s bachelorette party, or your neighbor’s baby’s birthday? No? Okay then. Avoid these subjects on LinkedIn, too.</p><p>Stick to writing posts that will make you look good to employers. If you want to unburden yourself of personal stories, you don't lack for other options—among them, <a href="http://medium.com">Medium</a> and <a href="http://wordpress.org/">WordPress</a>. </p><h2>Neglect Non-Virtual Networking</h2><p>Remember when people would go to events and happy hours to meet up with like-minded professionals? You know, before all our social interactions were controlled by our smartphones? The good news is, these events still exist, and just because LinkedIn has made it easy to virtually meet people, that doesn’t mean you should rely on it entirely. There's no real replacement for interacting with a person in real life. </p><p>When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, it’s easy to be forgotten. You're much more memorable if you meet someone you have something in common with in person. LinkedIn is a facilitator of these interpersonal interactions—but it’s not the only way, or even the best way, to grow your professional network. </p><p>If you are relying on LinkedIn to meet other professionals, be a person people want to connect with, and exchange ideas and resources. Tools like LinkedIn publishing or&nbsp;<a href="http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/12/05/introducing-your-new-slideshare-homepage/">SlideShare</a> can help you expand your network, and the company’s suite of six mobile applications make LinkedIn easily accessible on your smartphone—that is, if you’re <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/31/foursquare-facebook-linkedin-unbundling">willing to give up mobile real estate</a> to manage an ever-expanding network.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Lead image by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/smi23le/4613342990">smi23le</a></em><em></em></p>"Arson" is right out, too.http://readwrite.com/2014/08/12/linkedin-donts-mistakes-errors
http://readwrite.com/2014/08/12/linkedin-donts-mistakes-errorsSocialTue, 12 Aug 2014 06:02:00 -0700Selena LarsonLinkedIn Updates Its App As Part Of Its Mobile Dis-Integration<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>LinkedIn’s <a href="http://blog.linkedin.com/2014/07/28/new-mobile-profile">new mobile redesign</a>, called “Blue Steel” internally, aims to make it easier to find out information about people and make connections while on mobile.</p><p>The new update to the flagship LinkedIn application is the latest in a handful of updates and app launches as LinkedIn begins to <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/10/linkedin-connected-app-linkedin-contacts-relaunch">fragment its services</a> and create separate apps for separate services.&nbsp;There are now six different LinkedIn apps.</p><blockquote><p><strong>See also: </strong><strong><a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/10/linkedin-connected-app-linkedin-contacts-relaunch">LinkedIn's Latest App Aims To Reconnect You With Your Contacts</a></strong></p></blockquote><p>The flagship LinkedIn app has an updated look, but with the redesign also comes a better way of viewing someone’s profile. Now, when you want to know more about someone, the mobile LinkedIn profile shows you information that would be pertinent to an introduction—for instance, if you share an alma mater or work history in common. It also makes it easy to edit your profile, something that was hard to do previously on mobile.</p><div tml-image="ci01a33b7bbda8860e" tml-image-caption="On the left, my old LinkedIn profile. The new LinkedIn profile appears on the right.&amp;nbsp;" tml-render-size="medium" tml-render-position="center"><figure><img src="http://a3.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTE4MDAzNDE3ODkwNTg4MTc0.png" /><figcaption>On the left, my old LinkedIn profile. The new LinkedIn profile appears on the right.&amp;nbsp;</figcaption></figure></div><p>Additional information on the new mobile LinkedIn profile includes deeper analytics including who’s viewed your profile from where, and a section that details what you have in common. Like the desktop version, the revamped app will show you other profiles viewed by visitors to your own profile. It also makes it easy for people to see what you’ve posted on LinkedIn’s publishing platform.</p><p>Because there are so many apps for LinkedIn—including LinkedIn Connected, the app the company debuted <a href="http://readwrite.com/2014/07/10/linkedin-connected-app-linkedin-contacts-relaunch">earlier this month</a>—the company made it easy to bounce back and forth. So if you’re using Connected and notice that someone got a new job, you can flip over to view their full profile in the LinkedIn flagship app.&nbsp;</p><p>LinkedIn is following the lead of other social apps like Facebook and Foursquare—all these companies are breaking up their services into multiple apps, in the hopes of appealing to a broader mobile-driven audience.&nbsp;</p><p><em>Lead image by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/89228431@N06/11220931254">Reyner Media on Flickr</a></em></p>Its mobile apps are coming apart, literally.http://readwrite.com/2014/07/28/linkedin-new-profile-app
http://readwrite.com/2014/07/28/linkedin-new-profile-appSocialMon, 28 Jul 2014 21:00:21 -0700Selena LarsonBoutique Chic: Five Great Analysts Who Are Under the Radar<!-- tml-version="2" --><p> There's a reason that IDC, Forrester, and Gartner are so big. They offer scale and coverage that small firms can't match, and they attract industry heavyweights who can make or break emerging technologies. But there's a downside to scale. Unless you're a corporate whale, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and getting that superstar on the phone in a pinch might take more time than you have.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e460036d19"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyNDM0ODk4MzQ1NjI0MTY2.jpg" /></figure></div><p>I'm certainly not suggesting that you throw away your existing subscriptions, particularly if you're a vendor or solution provider. Put some effort into those relationships, and they'll pay themselves back several times over. But there's something to be said for the little guy, and there are hundreds of smaller analysis firms that can provide you with the kind of service and support you need to make informed decisions on a daily basis.</p><p>There's no way to provide a comprehensive list of analysts or coverage areas in small firms, but I've chosen five analysts who exemplify the kind of breadth in business model, coverage areas and perspective you can find when you look beyond the Big Three. Full disclosure: I've worked with some of these people before, but don't hold that against them.</p><p>Billy Pidgeon<br tml-linebreak="true" /><a href="http://www.m2research.com/">M2 Research<br tml-linebreak="true" /></a>Coverage Area: Gaming</p><p> The gaming industry is a tough nut to crack. It's an art, a business and a unique exercise in supply-chain economics. Plenty of analysts cover financials ("300,000 units shipped!") and tech ("11 million polygons!"), but most leave the games themselves to the press.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e4d0018266"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyNDM0ODk5OTU2MjMxNDQ5.jpg" /></figure></div><p>M2's Billy Pidgeon understands all three worlds. While he's spent the last dozen years at various research houses, Pidgeon will always be a gamer at heart. He's produced <a href="http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,805/">more than 20 games</a>, including major releases such as 1997's Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. This street cred gives him access to insights and talent that more buttoned-up analysts might miss. If you're looking for one-on-one practical advice about the gaming market from someone who's been there but also gets the big picture, check him out.</p><p>The Guys at RedMonk<br tml-linebreak="true" /><a href="http://www.redmonk.com/">RedMonk<br tml-linebreak="true" /></a>Coverage Area: Multiple (Tech-Related)</p><p> If you're a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV_series)">Firefly</a>&nbsp;fan, think of RedMonk as the BrownCoats of the analyst world. If you're not, their motto should tell you what you need to know. "Analysis by the people, for the people" says it all. I would have chosen just one of their four analysts, but that would have violated their whole "community" vibe.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e530008266"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTIyNDM0OTAxNTY2ODQ5NjM4.png" /></figure></div><p>RedMonk tips its hat to the open-source world it covers by giving away its research, believing that an open discussion provides the greatest benefit to everyone, including their paying customers. They make their money from consulting services that start at a flat $5,000 per year, increasing with the size of your company or your consulting demands. For your money, you get access to very astute technical minds focused on helping vendors produce tools that developers will actually want to use. As the business model might suggest, it's a very populist approach in which the end user, IT manager, or systems analyst is a lot more important than the CIO, which is dramatically different than the coverage aims of most larger firms. If you're a software developer, $5,000 a year is a very small price to pay for a contrarian perspective.</p><p>David Schatsky<br tml-linebreak="true" /><a href="http://greenresearch.com/">Green Research<br tml-linebreak="true" /></a>Coverage Area: Sustainability</p><p> Sustainability is no longer just hip; it's an essential (and sometimes mandated) part of doing business, sitting on a growing pile of hard science. It's a big industry, so hundreds of consultancies have bolted on an "eco-" to get your business. It's tough to weed out the pretenders.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e5b0018266"><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyNDM0OTAzNDQ1ODkyMzc3.jpg" /></figure></div><p>David Schatsky has a background in technology, policy and finance. He also spent nearly 10 years at JupiterResearch as a Research Director and President (yet more disclosure: He was also my boss there for a while), so he understands the analyst gig. But what sets him apart from the rest of the eco-kids is his understanding that he shouldn't do it alone. When he founded Green Research, Schatsky brought in David Meyers, an environmental heavyweight, to build out the company's real-world expertise and complement his research experience, and they've further rounded out their expertise with associated content providers. The result is a small, personalized shop that should be able to address most of your environmental concerns directly, but has the connections to pull in other experts where needed.</p><p>Tony Byrne<br tml-linebreak="true" /><a href="http://www.realstorygroup.com/">Real Story Group<br tml-linebreak="true" /></a>Coverage Area: Content Management</p><p> Real Story Group doesn't work with vendors they cover. At all. No consultations, white papers, or appearances at vendor events - nothing that could possibly influence their coverage. This independence irritates the industry and helps their clients (anyone working with content or knowledge management) trust what they read. While RSG has a number of top-notch analysts (<a href="http://www.realstorygroup.com/Who-We-Are/Analysts/15-Regli">Theresa Regli</a>&nbsp;deserves a shout-out, particularly regarding international content management issues), the man behind the business model is Tony Byrne, the company's founder.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e620038266"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyNDM0OTA1MzI1MDc3MDk0.jpg" /></figure></div><p> RSG's Evaluation Reports are their most popular deliverable, largely because of their Consumer Reports-style comparison charts. They aren't cheap (running around $2,500 per report), but they can save you tens or hundreds of thousands during your evaluation process and give you the answers you need to ask the right questions of your vendors. Byrne is convinced that RSG's objectivity and laser focus will convince most one-off purchasers to stick around as clients for further research, as well as advisory services to help manage the tools and content with the software you've bought. So far, so good.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e6b0016d19"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTIyNDM0OTA3NzQwODY1MTI2.png" /></figure></div><p>Laurie Orlov<br tml-linebreak="true" /><a href="http://www.ageinplacetech.com/">Aging in Place Technology Watch<br tml-linebreak="true" /></a>Coverage Area: Seniors, Health Technology</p><p> Seniors are our fastest-growing demographic segment, and the technology required to help them age is of tremendous social and financial importance. So it's strange that until fairly recently, most major research firms treated the category like an afterthought. Laurie Orlov is one of the few experts in that space, and the foremost authority in the study of using technology to remain in the home as you age. In fact, she kind of created it.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2f9e700036d19"><figure><img src="http://a2.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyNDM0OTA5MzUxNTQzMzk4.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Jeff Makowka, AARP's Senior Strategic Advisor, Thought Leadership, explains her impact: "She's a real visionary. She took her past life (as a Forrester analyst) and overlapped it with a caregiving experience and basically thought up the category. Solutions already existed, but she defined and legitimized Aging in Place Technology."</p><p>Like every boutique analyst, Orlov's journey is unique, and probably impossible at one of the largest firms. Small firms will never give you the coverage of the Big Three, and can't shout your voice as loudly to the world, but they do a great job of filling the gaps if you're willing to do some searching.</p><p>Have you had experiences with small research firms? Let us know who you've used and how it worked.</p><p><em>Lead image courtesy of <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a>.</em></p>There's a reason that IDC, Forrester, and Gartner are so big. They offer scale and coverage that small firms can't match, and they attract industry heavyweights who can make or break emerging technologies. But there's a downside to scale. Unless you're a corporate whale, it's easy to get lost in the shuffle, and getting that superstar on the…http://readwrite.com/2012/05/03/boutique-chic-five-great-analysts-who-are-under-the-radar
http://readwrite.com/2012/05/03/boutique-chic-five-great-analysts-who-are-under-the-radarWorkThu, 03 May 2012 09:03:00 -0700Cormac FosterOpenStack Leader: Open Source Needs to Rethink Its Priorities<!-- tml-version="2" --><p> Philosophically, the open source concept borrows some selected elements from socialism. It upholds a notion of the "common good," it eschews the appearance of authority or hierarchy, and it often frowns upon capitalizing on one's own work, insofar as being exclusive. In practice, however, open source projects may look less like Big Brother from <em>1984</em> and more like Big Brother from reality TV.</p><div tml-image="ci01b29992b0036d19"><figure><img src="http://a2.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTk0Mzg0Mjc2NzYx.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Joshua McKenty's still-young career is, compared to those of other capitalist executives, surprisingly replete. He's led development teams for the Netscape browser, and is intimately familiar with Netscape's successors at Mozilla. His next stroke of luck was with the space program, helping to create and then lead one of the world's most successful cloud computing projects, NASA Nebula. His work with NASA spawned the open source community's most successful - and perhaps most important - project in the last few years, the <a href="http://openstack.org">OpenStack cloud operating system</a> - and he sits on that project's governing body. In-between jobs, he just happened to pioneer <a href="http://secondmuse.com/portfolio/view/GEM/">an earthquake modeling system for the World Bank</a>.</p><p>What McKenty's learned from a life that may not be one-third of the way over yet, are the lessons you'd expect to tell your grandkids. <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/09/the-dream-of-openstack-in-a-co.php">Now he's the CEO of Piston Cloud</a>, the first commercial vendor dedicated to OpenStack. Already, he has a boatload of life lessons for the open source development community at large, and he's not about to wait for grandkids to come along to start sharing them. With a notable degree of eagerness and enthusiasm, Josh McKenty shared his insights with RWW.</p><h2>Open source vs. customer focus</h2><p>McKenty's story begins with Netscape. His time there began with the somewhat confused period late in the company's existence as a division of AOL. Immediately he learned that "open" comes in many shades and colors.</p><p>He calls the late period of Netscape 8 and 9 "probably the most complicated and nuanced open source environment you can imagine. Netscape was released as the Mozilla code base, and so everyone thinks of Firefox being to the benefit of Netscape. But <a href="http://mpl.mozilla.org/scope/tri-license-and-the-gpl/">the code is a tri-license</a> that allows Netscape to close it and develop it for proprietary [purposes] afterwards. Then you have the fact that Firefox, which everybody thinks of as being a Mozilla project, was actually a fork of Mozilla by a sole individual that Mozilla then reverse-forked back into their organization and turned into a $300 million-per-year business, which they did not share."</p><p>It's ownership and licensing schemes such as this, McKenty says, that make personal politics more prominent in open source projects than philosophies and governance models. He believes one of the Google Chrome project's greatest strengths comes from the insistence by the Chromium development team - to which Google appears to be adhering - that the code base remain "fully open-sourced, in the open."</p><p>It was at about this time when Mozilla began mitigating what the community described as "the tooltip bug" (typically with an amalgam of punctuation attached), and what the organization officially recorded as dozens of related bugs (<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218223">just one culmination was recorded here</a>).</p><p>"It was a bug that was recorded and watched and re-reported and duplicated 460 times over 7 years," McKenty relates. "And the response from the Mozilla developer community was always the same: 'If you really cared, you would learn how to code and fix it yourself.'</p><blockquote tml-render-size="large"><p><em>“We are an open source company, and every open source company lives or dies by their ability to balance their interaction with the community with their interaction with their customers.”</em><br tml-linebreak="true" />Joshua McKenty<br tml-linebreak="true" />CEO, Piston Cloud</p></blockquote><p> "It has always been the worst part of many open source projects, but I think Mozilla's more guilty of it than anyone else: the attitude that the developers tend to develop over time that <em>they</em> are the important users of the product," the <a href="http://www.pistoncloud.com/">Piston Cloud</a> CEO continues. "And this has never really been true. That's what's interesting about most open source software: The developers who are really deeply engaged in building it may have started out solving their own pain. But if they're really successful, there are usually two or three orders of magnitude more people using it than actually building it. So the disconnect between what it is and what it needs to become, gets larger and larger. This is why the open source projects that really survive in the long term figure out how to build that bridge back to the end user's requirements. And those are often commercial entities."</p><h2>Stage fright</h2><p>After Netscape, McKenty went on to be a software architect and business developer for Flock, Inc., whose product was a socially-oriented Web browser built on the Mozilla code base. While there, he tells us, "we would hire new developers turn them loose, and say, 'Every commit that you make is going to be looked at by other people in the world.' That's a terrifying experience, especially if you're a young coder or you're new to the code base... It has nothing to do with the philosophy of open source. It has to do with a sense of embarrassment or nervousness to have your daily commits be scrutinized by folks that maybe you think of as being more experienced than you."</p><p>McKenty points to the very project he oversees now - OpenStack - as one example where important components are <em>not</em> produced in the open: for example, support for IPv6 contributed by NTT Data of Japan. "[Of] the 260-odd folks who are actively contributing code, as opposed to design features or documentation or localization or whatever else... about a third of them are <em>not</em> building in the open. They all <em>design</em> in the open; that's the community requirement. But then they go home and they code for a couple of months until they have something that they can show, and then they make a big code drop, and then we attack it."</p><p></p><h2>To space and beyond</h2><p>Some of the earliest Mercury astronauts credit their good fortune with having been at the right place at the right time. By virtue of being teamed with just the right group of consultants in 2009, Joshua McKenty found himself as a lead architect on a project launched at NASA. <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/from_a_basement_to_the_stars_how_the_openstack_clo.php">Called Nebula</a>, it was America's most significant government-funded computer research facility since the heyday of the supercomputer.</p><p>On paper, McKenty worked with a firm called Anso Labs. He soon learned that doing any kind of government project involved a separation of what you see in reality from what's on paper.</p><p> "Despite whatever retrospective history has been applied to it, [Anso] was simply, at the time, a maneuver to deal with NASA internal politics around contracting," McKenty tells RWW. "The Nebula Project itself was built inside a larger IT contract that employs a couple of hundred people, and we were two or three subcontractors down from NASA proper at the time. So we were just trying to guarantee that we could keep our developer team together working on Nebula, while NASA went through a re-compete on the contract."</p><div tml-image="ci01b2999300018266"><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTk1NzI2NDU5NDk0.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Anso made it possible for Nebula to continue for as long as it did, keeping the project open and sharing its benefits with other developers through OpenStack. But that was only for so long. Eventually Nebula was de-funded, and the operation was folded back into NASA's existing supercomputing projects. There, McKenty says, outright opponents to cloud computing have taken full advantage of the opportunity to do next to nothing with Nebula.</p><blockquote tml-render-size="large"><p><em>“ It has always been the worst part of many open source projects, but I think Mozilla's more guilty of it than anyone else: the attitude that the developers tend to develop over time that <em>they</em> are the important users of the product. And this has never really been true.”</em><br tml-linebreak="true" />Joshua McKenty<br tml-linebreak="true" />CEO, Piston Cloud</p></blockquote><p>Meanwhile, Anso Labs was acquired by cloud service provider RackSpace. While some sources <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/10/rackspace_buys_openstack_partner/">played the acquisition as though it were a conspiracy</a>, McKenty tells us that RackSpace's motives are purely genuine: to see OpenStack succeed, and to continue what their own people, essentially, started.<br tml-linebreak="true" />
"I think what Rackspace has done with the contribution of Swift to OpenStack is really unprecedented in their market segment," says Piston Cloud CEO Joshua McKenty. "But RackSpace does not want to be a software company, and they don't really even want to be an open source software company. They want to be a fanatical support company; that's who they are, that's their DNA. Now they have this core open source project... around which they can provide their service.</p><p>"But to my mind, OpenStack isn't finished," he continues. "We haven't finished changing the world yet, and I wanted to stay focused on building out OpenStack to what it really needs to be."</p><h2>Spinout from the Nebula</h2><p>While many of McKenty's personal best friends went with Anso to RackSpace, he stayed out to pursue his own dream. Exactly what that was hadn't quite formed yet, even as late as the fall of 2010. He took a six-month sabbatical, during which he found time for that little earthquake modeling project for the World Bank. He joined a working group on the role of governments and organizations in building technology infrastructure, along with a handful of friends and associates - Vint Cerf, Sergey Brin, and Vivek Kundra.</p><p>"None of those environments actually gave me the same opportunity to understand the requirements that I've gotten out of being the CEO of a startup," McKenty tells us. "The reason to be Piston Cloud right now - aside from the fact that it's going to be the best business ever - [is] to be in the room with the people who are going to use the product, and actually talk to them about what they need. It's very hard to get in the room with the folks who will be most impacted by the technology without being a vendor."</p><p> Despite the most honest and thoughtful community outreach, says McKenty, a non-commercial or semi-commercial open source project simply does not garner the level of confidence from its customers that a commercial project does. Almost immediately upon building Piston Cloud, McKenty found himself in direct communication with existing OpenStack users who had never been in contact with anyone representing OpenStack in the past. Being a CEO makes one more accessible than being a committee.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2971f20066d19"><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTIyMzI2Mjk5MDIzODAyOTgy.png" /></figure></div><p>One example: A disaster risk reduction facility is headquartered in Indonesia, but has OpenStack-based cloud services in Australia and customers in Australia. It wanted to expand its cloud to Jakarta, and needed Piston Cloud's help. It's the type of customer contact Anso Labs would have only dreamed about, and now it's coming directly to the source.</p><p>"Nobody in the OpenStack community even knew that the Australian government was evaluating it, let alone had pushed it into production," remarks McKenty. "In one phone call from an inbound request, I ended up on the phone with the folks in Australia who had been operating OpenStack at scale, and was able to talk to them about <em>exactly</em> what their needs were, and what they wanted to see in the next release. And there was no way they were going to make it to Boston in person to talk about this.</p><p>"The property of being a vendor, and the property of being in the press, as odd as that sounds, gives us this amazing opportunity to really understand what people need," he continues. "The commercial side of this has an amazingly crystalizing effect on people's priorities of what they want built. We are an open source company, and every open source company lives or dies by their ability to balance their interaction with the community with their interaction with their customers... Can we present ourselves in ways that are understandable to those two different communities without ever becoming two-faced, or engaging in a dichotomy? It has to be, honestly, <em>this is who we are</em>, in all cases."</p>Philosophically, the open source concept borrows some selected elements from socialism. It upholds a notion of the "common good," it eschews the appearance of authority or hierarchy, and it often frowns upon capitalizing on one's own work, insofar as being exclusive. In practice, however, open source projects may look less like Big Brother from…http://readwrite.com/2011/10/02/openstack-leader-open-source-n
http://readwrite.com/2011/10/02/openstack-leader-open-source-nHackSun, 02 Oct 2011 03:00:00 -0700Scott M. FultonSome Thoughts on the Passing of Dan McCracken (1930 - 2011)<!-- tml-version="2" --><p>There is a missing characteristic to most of what is published today on the subject of computing. At some point in time, as a matter of course, we stopped treating the subject with respect and reverence, and we started adorning it with buzzwords, marketing promises and metaphors borrowed from the self-help department.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2998a40016d19"><figure><img src="http://a3.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTU4MTQ1NDMwMTE4.jpg" /></figure></div><p>What Daniel D. McCracken managed to accomplish as early as 1957 was to give the knowledgeable layperson a foundation for understanding business processes in terms of procedural mathematics. As a young author decades ago, I studied McCracken's methods and I attempted to take his lessons to heart. In some of my first books on Visual Basic, I was inspired by McCracken to demonstrate a relatively simple concept using a substantively more complex tool: I demonstrated program control using sort algorithms.</p><p>McCracken did this from the very beginning, and he may have mystified his audience as much as I did mine. But he performed a necessary task, and he was probably the first to do it. He showed how a complete program that performs a complex function is developed from the core out. Although the concept was probably born in the first IBM laboratories to put FORTRAN to use on a daily basis, McCracken was the first to demonstrate a concept borrowed from artistry: the ability to see the complete product holistically, build working models instead of partial fragments and keep it working with each implementation.</p><p>McCracken knew exactly what he was doing - the man reasoned on all levels at once, as evidenced by his later treatises on public policy and theology. In this excerpt from his 1975 paper, "How to Teach Structured COBOL to Beginners," McCracken reiterates the principle he had already, by that time, been putting to use in his classroom and his published work for two decades. What he said, and how he said it, has not in the nearly four decades since.</p><blockquote><p>Structured programming, for the purposes of this paper, may be defined as a style of programming in which only three logic control elements are used, namely, sequence, selection (IFTHENELSE), and iteration (DOWHILE). The scope of control of each selection and iteration element is displayed by consistent indentation. The use of only three logic elements applies both to coding, using whatever logic elements the chosen language provides, and to program design, which is done using either structured flowcharts or, preferably, some form of pseudo-code. A complete program design is achieved in a series of approximations, beginning with a simpler problem from which the desired design can be developed, in a process commonly described as stepwise refinement.
</p><p>The goal of structured programming is the production of programs that as clearly as possible display their structure, i.e., the interrelationship of their parts. This clarity is a primary benefit of the restriction to only a few logic elements, which leads to programs that can be read in a "top-down" fashion, that is, without skipping around through the program. The purpose and function of any program statement can generally be understood by looking at only a few other statements, all physically close by, which is very seldom true of programs written by conventional methods. The main drawback of GO TO statements is that they tend to destroy this locality of context.</p><p>The design and coding stages of programming may or may not be shorter when structured programming methods are used, but the check-out and maintenance phases are generally much faster and easier to manage since programs are easier to understand. As a result overall programmer productivity tends to increase, sometimes by a dramatic factor.</p></blockquote><p>There is a missing characteristic to what is <em>said</em> about computing, but nothing at all missing about what is <em>meant</em> by the finest of its practitioners. Daniel D. McCracken gave the world six wonderful decades of brilliant explanation, most of which today is buried in barely accessible texts and vastly dispersed libraries. Most of it is treated as obsolete. A great deal of it, however, is about as obsolete and inapplicable to the current age as the three brilliant, illustrative paragraphs cited above.<br tml-linebreak="true" /></p>There is a missing characteristic to most of what is published today on the subject of computing. At some point in time, as a matter of course, we stopped treating the subject with respect and reverence, and we started adorning it with buzzwords, marketing promises and metaphors borrowed from the self-help department.
What Daniel D. McCracken…http://readwrite.com/2011/08/15/some-thoughts-on-the-passing-o
http://readwrite.com/2011/08/15/some-thoughts-on-the-passing-oHackMon, 15 Aug 2011 07:03:31 -0700Scott M. FultonHow Washington University is Developing the Next Generation of iOS Programmers<!-- tml-version="2" --><p> This week was finals week for the summer semester at Washington University in St. Louis, and one event that I regularly enjoy attending is the iOS programming class final presentations. Being the summer term, it was a very compressed schedule: the students, some of whom are older and have full-time day jobs, have about a month to learn how to use the various Apple tools, spec out and code their apps. </p><div tml-image="ci01b29987a0018266"><figure><img src="http://a5.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTQ2ODcxMTQwOTY2.jpg" /></figure></div><p>I've gone to several of these final presentations in the past (<a href="http://strom.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/developing-the-next-gen-of-iphone-apps-programmers/">here is a report from 2009</a>) and I continue to be impressed with what the students come up with. Sure, there are the usual mishaps: code that doesn't compile, or last-minute hacks to add one more feature or tweak a particular icon to display properly. But the class is a great arena for preparing these senior computer science majors with what they are going to have to face in the real world. </p><p>The students have to propose an idea for their app, look around on the App Store to see what is currently available, put together a data and coding plan and then write the code. Often they have to access particular Web services and public APIs for their app, and these interfaces can and do change over the course of the course, of course. (Sorry.) One of the teams was trying to access information from the video streaming site Justin.tv, and lamented the lack of any programmatic connection. Another was wrestling with a badly formed series of RSS feeds. How many computer science grads could even think about these things, let alone debate these issues? It brought a smile to my face. </p><p>Over the six semesters that the instructor, Todd Sproull, has taught the class, he has had close to 150 students, and mostly male (last night was 100% guys). There is usually a waiting list, as there are only so many computers to go around. "The students have always been bright, but it seems that more of them are using tools from other courses and companies (Google and Facebook APIs as examples) to create more compelling apps," he said. Some of the class band together and program as a team. This creates a certain wow factor at the final presentation - "speaking to the power of teamwork," as Sproull mentioned. Others go it alone. </p><p>Some of the graduates have gone on to get great jobs: one student interviewed at Apple, and as a result of demoing their iPhone project, got hired. It helped that they were doing active debugging of the app during the interview. So much for asking silly questions like how many manhole covers it would take to pave over a baseball field and such. Almost all of these students go on to work in the industry, no surprise. Recruiters and others: take note and come take a look at these fertile fields in the future.</p><p>There are five apps from all of the classes that have been actually published on the App Store, with a few more awaiting campus approval. One of them is a dandy. It is called <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wu-map/id403202850?mt=8">WU Map, and has the entire campus map right on your iPhone</a>, as you can see in the screenshot. This is a little thing, but for those freshmen and people like me that aren't that familiar with the campus, it sure beats having to print out a map every time we have to visit. According to Sproull, several of these apps have at least made back their $100 listing fees paid by the students. </p><div tml-image="ci01b2998800016d19"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTQ3OTQ0ODc3MzM3.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Sproull has done a better job preparing his students to understand Web data sources and how to get around some of the quirks of the Apple simulator, too. The summer class seemed to have more fun than in previous semesters, maybe it was just the concentrated amount of time that the students had for class together. One of the students had an app that would allow the user to note his favorite beers, geolocated to the bar that it was consumed. He found a database of more than 8,000 beers, and we joked that we could see that hands-on research really paid off with his app.</p><p>What surprised me was that only one of the apps presented was for iPads. This was an app that will be finished soon for the business school magazine. This was very polished, indeed looking better than many mag apps that I have seen from professional editorial operations. It used an RSS feed to grab the various articles from the magazine's Web site. The rest of the projects were focused on the iPhone. </p><p>The biggest hurdle these days has nothing to do with the quality of the code, however. It is about the ownership and approval of intellectual property of the student-created apps. The university is still cogitating on exactly how this transpires. There is some concern about a student intentionally (or even unintentionally) distributing a malicious app, and how the school will approve apps that get distributed on the App Stores.</p><p>Nevertheless, it was an enlightening evening, and I wish all these students well with their apps. </p>This week was finals week for the summer semester at Washington University in St. Louis, and one event that I regularly enjoy attending is the iOS programming class final presentations. Being the summer term, it was a very compressed schedule: the students, some of whom are older and have full-time day jobs, have about a month to learn how to use…http://readwrite.com/2011/08/04/how-washington-university-is-d
http://readwrite.com/2011/08/04/how-washington-university-is-dHackThu, 04 Aug 2011 03:30:00 -0700David StromTeaching Creative Writing with Programming<!-- tml-version="2" --><p> One of my favorite sessions at <a href="http://www.oscon.com">OSCon</a> this week was <a href="http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/19022">Teaching Creative Writing with Python</a>. Adam Parrish talked about his course <a href="http://rwet.decontextualize.com/">Reading and Writing Electronic Text</a>, which he teaches at New York University as part of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Although the title emphasizes teaching creative writing through programming, the reverse is also true: the course teaches programming through experimental writing.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2996f90026d19"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTIyMzI4ODQzNTIzNDkwNDA2.png" /></figure></div><p>So how exactly is Python programming useful in creative writing? Parrish's course doesn't deal with artificial intelligence, or attempts at creating narratives or creating interactive hypertext or anything like that. It covers, for lack of a better term, procedural poetry. Typically, a student takes a starting set of text, writes a Python program to modify that text and then interprets the results.</p><p>Parrish cited non-electronic procedural poetry experiments as inspirations for the course. For example, he talked about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Thousand_Billion_Poems">Raymond Queneau's Cent mille milliards de poèmes</a>, a book in which the text has been cut into strips that can be re-arranged to create nearly endless configurations:</p><p><br tml-linebreak="true" /><em>Photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasguest/3597995774/">Thomas Guest</a>. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Cent+mille+milliards+de+po%C3%A8mes&amp;ss=0&amp;ct=0&amp;mt=all&amp;w=all&amp;adv=1">More photos of the book on Flickr</a>.</em></p><div tml-image="ci01b2998720018266"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTQ0NDU1MjIxODYy.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Parrish also mentioned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Berrigan">Ted Berrigan's Sonnets</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Melnick">David Melnick's PCOET</a>. Parrish didn't mention them in his talk, but the <a href="http://dwwp.decontextualize.com/">course website</a> also mentions Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs' work with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique">cut-up technique</a>.</p><p>Using these works as a springboard, Parrish teaches his students UNIX commands for working with text, Python text processing techniques (such as ranging from basic string manipulation to n-gram analysis) and regular expressions to help them create their own procedural texts. He says he chose Python because it's easy to use and has a lot of tools for working with text. Using computers students can process more text and do so more quickly than the physical methods used by the experimenters of the past.</p><p>Parrish says pacing is one of the most difficult issues faced in the class. Beginner programmers always feel the class moves too quickly, while experienced programmers find that it moves too slow.</p><p>Parrish's focus is clearly in creative writing and helping students explore text in new ways. But it's a really interesting experiment in helping art or humanities students learn to program (see <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/05/douglas-rushkoff-interview.php">our interview with Douglas Rushkoff</a> (who is also a teacher at ITP on why everyone should learn to program). A similar model could also be used to inject the humanities into programming and engineering education.</p><h2>Where to Find More</h2><p>Many of the lessons can be found <a href="http://www.decontextualize.com/teaching/rwet/">here and the code examples are <a href="http://github.com/aparrish/rwet-examples">in Github</a>.</a></p>One of my favorite sessions at OSCon this week was Teaching Creative Writing with Python. Adam Parrish talked about his course Reading and Writing Electronic Text, which he teaches at New York University as part of the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Although the title emphasizes teaching creative writing through programming, the…http://readwrite.com/2011/07/30/teaching-creative-writing-with-programming
http://readwrite.com/2011/07/30/teaching-creative-writing-with-programmingHackSat, 30 Jul 2011 10:19:00 -0700Klint FinleyThe History of Programming Languages [Infographic]<!-- tml-version="2" --><p><a href="http://rackspace.com">Rackspace</a> recently published a nice infographic on the <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/blog/2011/05/17/infographic-evolution-of-computer-languages/">evolution of programming languages</a>. It starts with FORTRAN and COBOL and runs through Ruby on Rails (which, yes, is a framework and not a language). </p><div tml-image="ci01b29960c0018266"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTIyMzI4Nzc5NjM1ODUxODc4.jpg" /></figure></div><p>Unfortunately, it omits such influential languages as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)">Lisp</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_60">ALGOL 60</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltalk">Smalltalk</a>. But including every important language ever would make for a pretty long infographic.</p><p></p><div tml-image="ci01b2998650016d19"><figure><img src="http://a4.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTIyMzI4OTQwMTYwMjQ5MTEz.png" /></figure></div><p>The popularity stats at the end are apparently sourced from the <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/01/javascripts-popularity-decline.php">oft criticized</a> TIOBE. You can find the full sized graphic and bibliography <a href="http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/blog/2011/05/17/infographic-evolution-of-computer-languages/">here</a>.</p>Rackspace recently published a nice infographic on the evolution of programming languages. It starts with FORTRAN and COBOL and runs through Ruby on Rails (which, yes, is a framework and not a language).
Unfortunately, it omits such influential languages as Lisp, ALGOL 60 and Smalltalk. But including every important language ever would make for…http://readwrite.com/2011/07/27/the-history-of-programming-languages-infographic
http://readwrite.com/2011/07/27/the-history-of-programming-languages-infographicHackWed, 27 Jul 2011 12:20:00 -0700Klint FinleyJavaScript Creator Says the Language Wasn't Just Dumb Luck<!-- tml-version="2" --><p> JavaScript creator Brendan Eich has spoken out against the perception that JavaScript was an arbitrary or random success. In a <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2783060">comment at Hacker News</a> Eich explains the historical context from which JavaScript emerged and how it was unlikely to have happened any other way.</p><div tml-image="ci01b2995de0028266"><figure><img src="http://a1.files.readwrite.com/image/upload/c_fill,cs_srgb,w_620/MTIyMzI4NzY3Mjg3ODE1NDQ5.png" /></figure></div><p>In comment at <a href="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4308#comment-66267">Lambda the Ultimate</a>, Eich wrote: "History has reason and rhyme as well as chance, it is not all and only random. For my part, there was little 'arbitrary' in what I did, including the mistakes -- some of those weirdly recapitulated early LISP mistakes."</p><p>Eich's comments were in response to comments like <a href="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4308#comment-66103">this one</a>: "If Brendan Eich chose SmallTalk for the Netscape browser, that's probably what you'd be gushing about today."</p><p>And this one: "It's just dumb luck and path dependence. If Netscape had put scheme into Navigator we'd be using that instead."</p><p>Eich writes at Hacker News:</p><blockquote><p>"Subtle chains of cause and effect were at play among people involved, going back years to Silicon Graphics (Netscape drew from UIUC and SGI, plus montulli from Kansas, and jwz). Also going back through the living history of programming languages. SICP and some of the Sussman &amp; Steele 'Lambda the ...' papers made a big impression on me years before, although I did not understand their full meaning then.
</p><p>"Remember, I was recruited to 'do Scheme', which felt like bait and switch in light of the Java deal brewing by the time I joined Netscape. My interest in languages such as Self informed a subversive agenda re: the dumbed down mission to make 'Java's kid brother', to have objects without classes. Likewise with first-class functions, which were inspired by Scheme but quite different in JS, especially JS 1.0.</p><p>"Apart from the 'look like Java' mandate, and 'object-based' as a talking point, I had little direction. Only a couple of top people at Netscape and Sun really grokked the benefit of a dynamic language for tying together components, but they were top people (marca, Rick Schell [VP Eng Netscape], Bill Joy).</p><p>"Rather than dumb luck, I think a more meaningful interpretation is that I was a piece of an evolving system, exploring one particular path in a damn hurry. That system contains people playing crucial parts. Academic, business, and personal philosophical and friendship agendas all transmitted an analogue of genes: ideas and concrete inventions from functional programming and Smalltalk-related languages."</p></blockquote><p>Eich also tells the story of how JavaScript came to be <a href="http://brendaneich.com/2008/04/popularity/">here</a>. </p><p>In short, the decision to use JavaScript instead of a language like Smalltalk or Scheme was far from arbitrary and arose from specific circumstances.</p><p>Also, although the lack of a better alternative has certainly ensure JavaScript's popularity, neither Netscape nor JavaScript's success was ensured from the beginning. Other browsers, such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_browser">Mosiac</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_(web_browser)">Cello</a> existed. I had all three on my computer around the time JavaScript was being developed, and I still knew people who still preferred <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)">Lynx</a> to the graphical Web. </p><p>And as Eich points out, not everyone saw the value in a scripting language in addition to Java. Had JavaScript not been good enough, it could have been discontinued or replaced.</p>JavaScript creator Brendan Eich has spoken out against the perception that JavaScript was an arbitrary or random success. In a comment at Hacker News Eich explains the historical context from which JavaScript emerged and how it was unlikely to have happened any other way.
In comment at Lambda the Ultimate, Eich wrote: "History has reason and…http://readwrite.com/2011/07/22/javascript-was-no-accident
http://readwrite.com/2011/07/22/javascript-was-no-accidentHackFri, 22 Jul 2011 04:00:00 -0700Klint Finley